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Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the Commons in February that the franchise would only be able to continue in its current form for a “very small number of months” as Stagecoach had “got its numbers wrong” and “overbid”.

The troubled route had previously been taken into state hands in 2009 after being run by National Express.

It was reprivatised when Stagecoach and Virgin signed a deal to run the East Coast line from 2015 to 2023, promising to pay the government £3.3bn to run the service.